Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

No, we are not. Some of the ports are private ports or private lands within the ports. They too have a real potential role and they have to manage and assess the commercial operation or commercial business. We want to allow for innovation within ports as to where is the best place for this to take place. The Chairman was at the launch of a major study by Bechtel, an international energy infrastructure consultancy. The report it did for Shannon Foynes Port was top drawer. It was visionary and long-term in its thinking, and showed that Shannon Foynes has huge potential for development but also places like Tarbert, Moneypoint and other jetties - for example, Shannon Airport has a jetty out into the port. I spoke to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, only yesterday and we said the potential for us to do something similar in Cork would be opportune. We have to think strategically about our ports as real centres of our economic development, our climate response and our energy security. It is a European-scale project because the rest of Europe is looking to us as a country which will likely have surplus energy, so that scale of ambition is what we have.